Alone No Longer
by Cassandra Skye
Summary: Folken. A story about healing in mind and in body. *Chapter 3 is up* (I'm the slowest author on Earth) R+R
1. Endless Daze

"Hello all!" As this omnipotent author scans the foreground, her face takes on a reddish hue as she notices only one sleeping hobo sleeping off to the side. "Ok…fine. Greetings to the sleeping hobo. This is the part in which I inform you that I'm not making any money out of this happy little shindig, and (unfortunately) none of the characters except Kira belong to me. I wish that they did because then I would have a good deal more money than I do, but oh well. That doesn't really matter. So please don't sue me. I'm a student. I have no money. I could give you a gumdrop, but that wouldn't pay your legal bills. If you object to my language skills, mostly since I do not possess any, please tell me what is grammatically correct. My second language is German, which I will be sure to lapse into as much as possible. Please read this and review it. (Heavy emphasis on that "review" word.) If you like it, then that's great. Make sure to tell me why. If you hate it, fine, just be prepared to back it up. There have to be more people reading this than one hobo.

"Quote" -- that is an example of a spoken quotation

'Quote' -- that is an example of a spoken quotation in a flashback

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Quote -- that is an example of someone's mind verbalizing their thoughts or just because I want it there. Hey people, it's called artistic license.

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I thought that I'd cried

I thought my tears were gone

Why did you have to walk in like this

Maybe I was all right this way

Alone

The truth is that I'm always alone

~Selah 1994~

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A flash of color; a red-orange hue penetrates his eyelids after the long sleep… 

"Ughnn…"

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Fantastic, time to pay for my various atrocities, here in the afterlife. He searched his senses to find the origin of the groan currently filling his ears. His eyes didn't want to open, and he wasn't about to press them. Besides, he really didn't want to know what this place looked like. He never thought that hell would include what seemed to feel like flannel sheets and a feather mattress, though. The smell of this place was a distinctly pungent citrus like it was immaculately clean, but there was a feeling of slight claustrophobia about it. Warmth radiated from all sides but seemed to have its origin beyond the foot of the bed. Yes, it must be a bed. Rock definitely isn't this soft. He finally identified the groan as coming from his own mouth and, wonder of wonders, it stopped when he shut it. It was really too bad he wouldn't be able to go back to the temple that he had frequented in his youth simply to inform the goddess's believers that the nine hells are warm. His current observations left him picturing an eternal sauna. Frankly, he would have much preferred the snow-covered plains that they were prophesied to be.

Having had just about as much fun as he was going to have examining his surroundings sans* eyes, he turned his attention to his physical state. _I'm still hurt…I didn't think that damnation could possibly be that cruel. _The soft throbbing of the blood in his veins gave the infirm man an extremely good idea of the cadence of his heart. There was a pain in his chest that was dulled as if with _schlafenbaum**_ but the pain in his head didn't seem to have enjoyed the same effect. _Not that I don't deserve this fate._

A sharply in-drawn breath, "Goddess mine! You moved! Are you finally awake?"

The voice pierced the silence like a saber slash. Female, his mind mused. Definitely female…good gracious…does she have to shriek so? _What was she doing here in hell?_ _Baka! If there's a woman here, then it obviously isn't hell, which means that I'm obviously not dead._ His mind rebelled against that last statement, as he wondered how he could have possibly survived. He remembered the injury that he had sustained. The pain was certainly still fresh in his mind, and he remembered dragging himself away. There was a forest…and then…nothing. He opened his mouth to say something, preferably something intelligent or witty, but his tongue seemed sluggish.

"Just take it slowly. You're doing just fine. Don't bother talking if you don't think that you can manage it, it's been quite some time since you've said anything."

Her voice had changed from a youthful tone of surprise to a more mature sounding concern. There was clear worry in that voice, and he was sure that she couldn't be faking it. As for the woman, all that he could tell was that she was occupying the standing room beside the right side of his bed. _Time to see my jailer, I suppose. _And with that, he opened his eyes. He immediately regretted the action, shutting them tightly to avoid the piercing light of the room. 

The woman scolded him as if she were speaking to a tiny child who had been caught in the act of doing some unspeakable wrong. "Well that wasn't particularly brilliant, was it? If _I _was waking up for the first time after five weeks, I certainly wouldn't be in any hurry to open my eyes." She continued in a calmer voice. "It isn't as if you can't wait a bit longer, at least until I dim the lighting, anyway."

"No…" he said. His voice was raspy and gravelly, but it still retained a hint of the deep tones that it possessed. He continued speaking slowly, carefully forming each thought before he said it. "Better, I think, if I just get used to the idea now. It won't hurt for long, anyway." So maybe he lied, still, he was a good liar. _She_ was probably convinced, anyway…

"I don't think that I've heard such an idiotic notion in the last decade!" she said. It was clear that she was about to launch into a tirade.

…or not.

He was not the sort of man who was incredibly confrontational. He was also not known for losing his temper, but he had had just about enough of this nonsense. He took a deep breath to give this know-it-all the talking too that she so richly deserved, but a searing pain ripped across his chest. He tried to open up his mouth to shout or scream but found himself gaping soundlessly at the pain. As the sharpness of the pain faded into a dull ache, he became aware of the woman scurrying around the room. She was apparently looking for something. If his chest hadn't hurt so badly, he would have laughed at the litany of curses that she was levying under her breath about men and their inability to be good patients.

"There…I guess that I shouldn't have to tell you that this will hurt," she said with a hint of irritability in her voice. "Why is it that the idiot who drags himself in here with a sword point in his chest doesn't seem to grasp the concept that his sutures may not be at a point where he should be removing them, I don't care if he is only breathing. Of all the…"

He felt something warm and wet across his chest and then his world erupted into a stinging agony that seemed to go on forever. He saw only red as he tried to find some respite. Gradually, his awareness of the pain floated away. His vision turned to black. He couldn't even hear the strange woman anymore.

Mercifully, unconsciousness claimed its victim once more, and Folken slept.

*Latin for without use of 

**a root used in primitive Fanalian healing practices something like an opiate (the word is German, literally meaning sleeping tree)


	2. Disturbing Revelations

Kirana Daerlian sat quietly in her modest kitchen. The table was tidy without even a cloth covering it, and the rest of the counter space in the room was very well kept. The hearth by the fireplace was littered with an odd assortment of blankets, and from the tired circles under her eyes, one could tell that Kirana was the one who had been using the hearth as a bed for quite some time. The rest of the room was for the most part normal, the cups and plates in the open cupboard were neatly arranged and everything seemed to be in a good state of clean.

Kira however, was a wreck. Her hands shook slightly as she grasped a mug of homemade tea, a testament to how much sleep she had been missing. She stared at the wall beyond her mug, the steam obscuring her vision, almost like she was trying to see her future in the swirling mist from the warm cup. She was tired. Certainly the dark circles under her eyes could have said as much, but far more telling were her eyes themselves. Her deep green eyes were of a shade of emerald that took you into them. It seemed as though you were about to tumble headlong into the secrets that they possessed every time that you so much as glanced at them. But they wore a cloudy expression now. They seemed weary, perhaps they had just seen too much. Her thick auburn hair was swept back into a simple thick braid at the nape of her neck, which reached about, halfway down her back. She wore a simple gray shift, cut off at the waist and tied in various places to have the simple look of a peasant blouse. She also wore men's breeches, never having found dresses practical for working clothes. On her small feet she wore boots that seemed to be from a military operation. Her clothes were not typical garments for a woman on Gaea; but then again Kira wasn't from Gaea. She took a deep breath and her troubled thoughts consumed her. Lost in memory, as though she was having a conversation with someone, Kira closed her eyes and thought about home.

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How long has it been? I wonder if these people know how odd it is to see your world in the night sky. No, not your world, your home. Yes that's better.

A memory invaded her mind before she could shut it out.

It was a small village like thousands of others in the Scottish countryside. A young girl sat sewing quietly, unable to see the sandy blonde boy behind her bearing a very mischievous expression.

'Give that BACK Eric! It's mine!'

Eric laughed as he danced around, his height keeping the needlework just out of the furious redhead's reach. This continued for several minutes until the redhead, having had just about enough of this, punched him square in the face. Eric immediately dropped to the ground, bleeding like a stuck pig from his nose. When he discovered the blood on his shirt, Eric began howling for his mother in addition to sobbing from the pain. The girl bit back a very unladylike curse as she dropped to her knees beside him.

'Eric . . . Eric I didn' mean it. I only wanted t' . . . Y' shouldn' ha' taken my work! It took me days to do!'

She scowled as she saw the flecks of blood now adorning her stitches. She sighed; realizing how she had overreacted. She put her hand on the side of his face trying to ascertain how much damage had been done. That was when it happened.

'Kira! Ow! Don' touch it! It hurts, Kira!'

Suddenly Kira's face went completely blank and turned a paler shade of white. Her hand glowed a soft shade of pink where it touched Eric's face. Before her eyes, Kira watched the bleeding stop and the purpling bruise on his face fade to nothing. As Eric's mother ran up to scold him she watched Kira's eyes roll back into her head as Kira slumped over unconscious, her nose bleeding a very little bit and the greenish yellow of a mostly healed bruise on her face.

A much older wiser Kira now sat in the kitchen of the tiny hut. She sighed softly at her own memories.

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Oh little girl . . . you should have known better then to do that. Bad enough to be a sassenach* child, worse still to be a witch.

A tear curved its way down her cheek as she thought of her past. She shook her head, snapping herself out of her self-made mental prison.

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I should know better. It shouldn't hurt so much, certainly not after all these years.

She finished her tea and set the mug down with a determined expression. She stood up, pushing herself away from the table. _Time to check in on the invalid._

She made her way into the only other room of her small home, and walked over to the bed where the patient slept uneasily. His eyes flickered back and forth and he moaned occasionally, clearly having a nightmare. Kira refrained from waking him, even though she wanted to. People did their best healing while they slept. Anyway, she would heal him the rest of the way now. Another week had gone by since the man first regained consciousness, and if he had woken since then, he hadn't let her know.

She gazed down at the sleeping man, drinking his appearance in once more. He had a long face, it made him seem older then the twenty-two or twenty-three that he probably was. He seemed to have a generous mouth, but there were frown lines beside the corners.

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He's way to young to have frown lines, and those creases between his eyebrows didn't get there by accident . . . What has he been through? I wonder if he'll tell me . . .

The purple tear tattoo underneath his right eye had caught her eyes right away. She still wondered what had caused him to put it there. The other thing that had first caught her eye was his right arm or lack thereof. In its place there was a metal monstrosity, that she supposed one _could _term as an arm, but she found it to be more like a claw then anything else.

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I wonder if he can use it like a hand? I couldn't sense anything organic beneath the metal, but maybe I missed something. Oh well, he looks better than he did when I found him. That much is certain.

She had been out in the woods hunting, her bow slung across her back. Closing her eyes, Kira relived the day in her mind.

A sudden rustle in the bushes caught her attention as she drew a white fletched arrow onto her bow. She crept closer, hoping that she had found a game bird to flush out. As she walked to the other side of the bush, she realized that she'd found something altogether different. She'd found a mess. Black feathers mixed with blood pooled just on the other side of the huge shrub and they led off on a very noticeable trail deeper into the woods. Thinking that she may have found her game bird, she headed off into a run after the creature that had made the trail.

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What a humanitarian I am, thinking more about my own stomach then that this trail might have been made by one of the wounded in this damnable war.

She followed the trail for about another 100 meters before she stopped short. Before her lay a man pooled in his own blood and what appeared to be thousands of black feathers.

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The feathers. . . that still makes no sense. I just can't stop wondering where they came from.

She let her memory blur over the next several weeks. She had dragged the man home, and days of surgery with sleepless nights had followed, as she watched over the fitfully restless man. She remembered the final sense of relief when she realized that he was going to survive despite his injuries. Now he had regained consciousness, and finally she wouldn't have to wait for him to heal any longer. He was at a point where she could take him the rest of the way.

"Well Kira, it's time that you stopped putting this off and just heal the poor man."

With that she placed her hand atop the stitches in the center of Folken's chest. She shut her eyes and with that her hand began to glow.

Folken awoke with a start at the pain the moment that her hand touched his chest. This time he didn't hesitate to open his eyes, but they widened when he realized that the pain was ebbing. In less than a minute the intense pain was completely gone, leaving not so much as an ache to show where it once was. He raised his left arm to touch his chest, half-afraid of what he may find, and found that he was . . .

"Healed? That wound should have killed me . . ."

An answer of sorts came what he turned to look at the woman beside him. She pulled her glowing…_glowing?! What's going on?_… hand away from him, and then winced and walked out of the room, but not before he noticed blood soaking through the front of her shirt. He immediately leapt up and grasped the edge of the bed before he fell over.

"I don't know who you are, but I'm too weak to walk and I'm going to need your help, so you may as well come back in here. If you went to all this trouble to heal me, there is no point in abandoning me now."

In the next room Kira struggled to wrap up her bleeding chest so the man wouldn't notice. She ignored the urge to growl at him and tell him to wait, a realized that he must be extremely confused at this point. She finished the layers of bandages across her chest and changed her shirt quickly. She grimaced at the new pain in her chest, but shook her head and smiled through it as she walked back into the bedroom, sporting a simple white peasant blouse.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have just left you in here like this. I guess I was just surprised to see you conscious again."

All right, it was a terrible excuse. She knew that, but what else was she going to tell him? Wordlessly she helped him back to a sitting position on the bed. If the man was massive while he was prone, he was still more so when he was up and about. Still, hard living had strengthened Kira past the point of traditional feminine weaknesses. She was incredibly wiry for her lithe 165 cm** frame. As she helped him lower himself to the bed, her mind began racing for things to feed this incredibly…well…huge man. Just about the time that she finished helping him sit down, she had finally settled on the soup that she'd made just the day before.

"I'm a bit confused right now… if you could…"

"One moment!"

As Kira took off for the kitchen again, ignoring the pangs of pain in her chest, Folken was beginning to get a bit frustrated. _You don't seem to be able to get a word in edge wise with this one!_ As he finished his thought, the girl…no…woman…hurried back into the room carrying a comically large bowl of soup and what appeared to be a ladle in place of a spoon. The pangs of hunger that he had been experiencing suddenly became a primary concern to Folken.

"Sorry, we can talk while you eat. You need food right now."

Rather than argue with this irritating statement of fact, Folken resigned himself to his fate. _At least the soup is good_, he thought grimly to himself.

Pleased to see that he was eating without any argument, Kira began to take in more of his physical appearance that she hadn't noticed before. His hair was absolutely stunning. When she had first brought him in, it had been almost a sky blue color and had stuck almost straight up in spikes, but in the weeks that had passed, it had grown out more and was now a silvery shade that hung down to about the top of his ears. It looked amazingly soft. He wasn't exactly pasty but his complexion was clearly a very light color. Even eating he didn't smile. Kira wondered when the last time was that he had attempted to. He was thin and extremely well muscled. The muscle had ebbed while he recovered from his injuries, but she was certain that he would see to its speedy return. As she thought about that, the image of his rather well defined chest popped into her mind and she thought with some satisfaction that thanks to her, he wouldn't have even a scar to show for it. He had well-defined and very high cheekbones, but part of that was probably from being malnourished. Well, by the time that he left her company, she'd see to it that he was very well fed. He wore no shirt, and hadn't had one when she had found him. His only article of clothing was a rather interesting black wrap about his waist that fell about his ankles. It had been horribly bloody when she had found him, but the blood had come out after a rather hard scrubbing. His eyes, ah that was something that she'd longed to see, and she wasn't disappointed. They were a dark deep red black. She had never seen anything so intriguing before. She didn't realize that she was staring until the man's deep calming voice interrupted her thought process.

"See something that you like?"

Her eyes widened as she took in what he had just said, and then quickly narrowed. She was not accustomed to living with people, and this stranger making assumptions about her…that was just too much.

"Don't you think that you'd better identify yourself, sir? It was kind enough of me to bring you into my home when I didn't know who you were, but I want to know now. I'm sure that if you were in my place you would ask for nothing less. I would rather not be harboring a nameless entity."

His eyelids closed halfway as she asked the question.

"You do know who you are, don't you?"

"I am well aware of who I am."

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I'm just worried about the response that my identity may elicit from you.

"Then tell me."

That much clearly was not a request. Folken refrained from sighing, and obliged his hostess.

"My name is Folken Lakur de Fanel, called by Strategos by some."

Her eyes widened with the shock of recognition and she shrank back with fear. The claw arm, the tear tattoo, it made sense now. How many posters had she seen with his picture, certainly she gave her heart out to a harmed man and now she'd let the devil himself into her home. Overwhelmed, she forced the words over her fear-paralyzed tongue.

"F…Folken of Zaibach?"

He would have said formerly of Zaibach, but he didn't get the chance as she fainted dead away.

*Outlander or foreigner

**about 5'5''

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Author's note it's all well and good to be writing a story like this. I love doing it, however, I don't like writing to nameless entities. So please review. Just let me know that someone is reading this thing!

~Cassie~


	3. Running Solves Nothing

Howdy all! Sorry about the long wait for this chapter! Two whole months! I know that it's short, but chapter 4 is already in the works. I had written all the way to chapter 5, but I was really unhappy with the way that they turned out. So please be patient with me! This is my first time writing anything substantial. Thanks to those of you who have reviewed! If you haven't reviewed please do! I don't have a nifty little reader counter, so I have no idea if anyone is actually reading this. As always, I am always open to ideas and suggested changes. I believe that it makes my work better. Thank you all for reading! I hope that you enjoy this.

Disclaimer: Don't own 'em. Wish I did. I own Kira, so keep your grubby mitts off! Don't sue me, I'm too young to go to jail. Rating is for later chapters.

Consciousness returned to Kira, slowly cutting through the haze of the sleep that she had fallen into. She _looked_ about the room with her mental eyes, seeking out the threat that she had allowed into her home. She sensed him finally; over in the rocking chair at the corner of the room. She attempted to cut away her mental contact, unwilling to look into such a sullied mind, but found herself caught in a strong feeling of…concern? Her eyes sprang open as she slammed her mental shields around her mind.

"You look as though you haven't slept in a month. I suppose that is the reason that it took so long for you to awaken," Folken said in a voice devoid of emotion. He sat completely motionless in the chair, watching her with a trademark blank expression. His gaze shook her visibly as his ruby eyes scanned her face. She shut her eyes to avoid looking at him. Her alarm at finding out his identity had given way to an intense anger.

Her gaze snapped back to him suddenly, her green eyes having taken on a cold luster in her rage. "You should have left while you had the chance. Now that I know what I've allowed into my home, I will not hesitate to kill you, sir. There is no chance of me permitting your escape with the knowledge that you would likely only harm more innocents--"

Folken had remained silent all through her maledictions, but the last biting comment was simply too much. He proceeded to lose his famous composure. "Listen to what I have to say before you deign to malign me, _woman_! I'm going to spend the rest of my days paying for my sins. What makes you think that I _wanted_ you to save me? Death would have been _far_ more merciful then to sit here and resign myself to your words. I have broken with Zaibach. The wound that I incurred was inflicted in a last ditch effort to destroy the empire, and I take it that it worked. If it hadn't, I doubt that either of us would be here right now." His voice had taken on a great deal of emotion, it's deep tones betraying a hurt that Kira simply couldn't fathom beneath the malice in his words. It now took on a softer tone as he continued. "As for those that I harmed…" He trailed off, his anger quickly subsiding. The pain in his chest from the blade had been far kinder than the pain in his heart. He continued in a monotone, whatever emotion he felt had been drained from his vocal inflection entirely. "Suffice it to say, that they seemed to be acceptable losses at the time."

She was completely speechless. This creature of Ziabach's creation had single-handedly ordered the destruction of Fanelia. He should no more inspire pity from her then should any creature from the lowest hells, and yet, she found every sense at her disposal pleading for her to take mercy on him. Caught in a maelstrom of choices, she made the simplest of them all, to simply postpone the decision. She spoke now, putting as much purpose and as little emotion into her voice as possible. "I don't know what to do with you, but I refuse to allow you to put others in danger, therefore until I determine what to do with you, you will remain here. There is not a village for hours in any direction, so I suggest that you resign yourself to this fate. If you attempt to escape, please believe that I will find you using any skill at my disposal."

He didn't even change his expression, but inside he worried. _I haven't any idea where I am…even if I could escape; I have no doubt that she would find me. I just wish that I knew the method that she would employ._ He had known several people of her personality 'type' before, and none of them would make such a blatant threat while there was any possibility that the consequence as stated would not come to complete fruition.

She simply took his silence as a chance to escape and promptly left the room and the cottage altogether. She was cursing her stupidity, particularly in dealing with this bout of inaction on her part, before she even left the room. She cleared the threshold of her home and took off toward the dense forest at a run. She had barely gone a quarter mile before the stupidity of running away hit her with the force of a 'melef's blast. Her mental eyes quickly scanned the surrounding area, and she was surprised to find that her unwanted houseguest hadn't even left the cottage. After reassuring herself that hurrying back would not be necessary, she began to slowly return to her home.

The sky was beginning to dim into hues of purple as she caught sight of her tiny dwelling once more. Nestled in the dense forest, the wooden domicile seemed to almost disappear amidst the massive trunks and foliage. Not even the river stone chimney stood out in any measure. It was as though she had built it with the idea that if she hid long enough, she would be forgotten. Maybe that's why she did. A neatly stacked woodpile lay just underneath a simple roof extension on the north side of the cottage, and the hewn wood seemed fresh. In truth, it was the only outward sign that anyone lived there. The clouded glass of the windows, with their bubbly imperfection told no tales of the inside of the cottage. Plain white curtains graced the inside, but the glass was not of the quality to be able to even make them out. Clearly, the only purpose of the windows was to let some light into a rather dreary environment. There was no cleared path outside or even any noticeable foot tracks outside. It was as though the occupant had always chosen a different route to her door. A well-defined circle of stones outside the door a few yards gave the initial impression of a Boy Scout's fire ring, but the trap door in the center and the upside-down bucket off to the side, tipped of the observer to the presence of a well in the tiny clearing. The only true clearing was the area of the cottage itself and a few yards beyond the door. The trees began again only a few feet beyond the tiny well and continued on as far as the eye could see in any direction. 

It was clear that if one didn't know their way here, it would be simple to get lost. Painstaking care had been taken to keep the ancient forest from damage during the construction of this building. It had neither the look nor the "feel" of a place out of harmony with its surroundings. The various creatures in the area, small rodents who barely noticed the arrival of the strangely clad woman, simply treated the abode as if it were nothing out of the ordinary, simply an abnormally large tree to build nests in. Kira noted all this with a small smile of pride gracing her thin lips. After all, who doesn't feel pride at the work of their own hands?

She entered her dwelling once more, noting the absence of feeling from the other room as she stood in the kitchen. Folken had gone to sleep, she supposed as she lay her tired frame into the myriad of blankets at the fireplace. She was exhausted in truth, and her sprint through the forest had not enlightened her in the least as to what she must do. She reluctantly sat up once more, only to change the bandage on the superficial wound now gracing her chest. 

She ripped off the bandage silently exhaling as the scab was torn off with the stained piece of cloth. Applying some woolen gauze to staunch the bleeding, she used a small knife to cut up some more fabric to line the pinned cloth that served to hold the bandage in place along her mid-section. After she had coated the newly cut cloth with a rather foul-smelling paste to ward off infection, Kira proceeded to wrap the bandage around her torso once more. The bandage held well enough when she pulled it tight along her tiny bust and she felt the waves of exhaustion jumbling her thoughts once more. It took her less than a minute to change her clothes into more appropriate sleepwear and she let herself fall into the mess of blankets. Sleep claimed her almost immediately.


End file.
